8 June 2017
Doing the Splits
After May, who?
by J.R.Thomas
Mrs May is famous for her love of walking; by this Friday she will be very relieved if she is not going for a long one. It is almost unknown for an election campaign to result in such an extraordinary reversal of fortunes. Some of this may be due to the terrible events in Manchester and on London Bridge which have brought the former role of Mrs May at the Home Office into the front line of the discussion about terrorism, but much has been self‑inflicted by the lady herself with gaffes, swerves, reversals, and a badly judged over‑personalised campaign. It began with a projected Conservative majority of over a hundred seats with Mrs May feted as strong and steady; it ends with Labour pulling almost level in the polls and Theresa looking, in a phrase which fate will bind to her, “weak and wobbly”. Even more, she has achieved something which the Labour Party thought to be impossible; she has made Mr Corbyn look electable, given him the carapace of a leader, a man of principles, a Prime Minister in waiting.
Jeremy has prospered over the last six weeks; he has largely ignored the attacks on his character and his history, behaving with dignity and humour. The Conservative strategy was to try to destroy whatever reputation he had, to get him rising to their attacks so that he could be seen as intemperate and unfit for senior office. Not only has he resisted such temptations, he has filled that slot so popular with the British public, that of the underdog. This is often, if not a vote winner, a popular position to occupy; and it is one that JC fills magnificently. Making vicious attacks on a grandfatherly figure with bicycle and allotment never seemed a great idea (nor a very nice one) and it has backfired big time. It seems unlikely that Jezz will be collecting the keys to Downing Street on Friday morning, but he should invest in stencilling on the back of his chair at Labour Party head office in Victoria Street “Jeremy Corbyn: Leader of the Labour Party”, as any challenge to that role seems unlikely for a while.
We are assuming Mrs May will still be the nominated keyholder for that famous black door, though no doubt after a number of shocks in the early hours of Friday. Many of those marginal seats that looked as though they would be turning blue may not have done so; Liberal Democrat activists are saying that their poll returns in several seats are showing them to be doing exceptionally well. Lib-Dems tend to peddle this line as a marketing technique – much as their election placards often say “Winning Here” even when they are clearly aren’t. The aim is of course to try to create a surge of enthusiasm, to overcome the credibility problem that a vote for them is wasted in seats long held by other parties. But this time, in some seats, with strong candidates, where a strong pro-Leave message might be well received, maybe it is true. If Labour voters do turn out on Thursday, if the Liberals win half a dozen seats extra, if the weather is dry and pleasant, if the Scottish Conservatives led by that rising star Ruth Davidson do not break the SNP domination of Scottish seats, if Welsh voting habits reassert themselves… If all that happens the Conservatives may not be in the happy place they assumed they would be this June.
We will know how this part of the story ends on Friday morning. But we might start to speculate on the subsequent story line. Mr Corbyn’s tale is, we suggest, fairly clear for a while, occupying that chair at Victoria Street and storing his new ties at the back of his wardrobe. Mrs May though may be wondering how big a role she gets in the next instalment. She has had a very bad election, her ratings plummeting, her standing undermined, and her formerly close‑knit support team damaged and in quarrelsome debate as to their futures. Mrs M is not the most clubbable of people and she does not have a great cadre of Mayites in her party to protect her; she will be acutely aware that the Conservative Party has a habit of defenestrating its fallen leaders if they do not jump quickly. David Cameron knew that much and escaped to wiggle his toes on camera. George Osborne is holed‑up in in Fortress Evening Standard from whence he could yet return, theoretically, although his lack of a seat is a strangely untidy inconvenience for this man of long‑plotted ambition. Mr Gove is being astonishingly helpful and is quietly close behind Mrs M at all times (but what is that in his hand?) And Boris? Now, where is Boris? Anybody know where Boris is this week? But Theresa, she has no place to hide and she has to (we are presuming) carry on and begin the Brexit discussions and deliver all those rash promises now to be called in.
The history of the Tory Party since the Second World War is not just about the split that was created by the creation and growth of the European Union. There is something deeper and more fundamental which lurks in the basement; it is the conflict between traditional Toryism, that conservative part of Conservatism, that approach to politics which is just about resisting change, which does not really have a philosophy or deep principles but which is about taking things slowly, seeing how they turn out, responding to the popular will only when it is clear what that will is, and managing the whole thing better than the other lot (whoever the other lot may be from time to time); and then there is the libertarian wing of the party. The collapse of the Liberal Party in the aftermath of the First World War did not leave traditional liberals with nowhere to go; many of them quietly shuffled into the Tory Party (noisily in the case of one W.S. Churchill) and the party in its pragmatic way quietly absorbed them. But the heirs to Gladstone have not gone away; they continue to influence the party and from time to time they get their hands on the steering wheel. Mrs Thatcher, the arch shrinker of government, got her hands on the steering wheel and all the controls, but since she was thrown off the back of the bus the party has slowly drifted back to its slightly paternalistic socialist‑lite MacMillan‑ist roots.
Mrs May is the most extreme so far of that tendency – she is not for nothing abused by some elements of her party for being a “lefty”. The point of the Referendum, carefully crafted by Mr Cameron, was to unite the party on Europe, a more complex task than keeping together the conservative and libertarian wings of the party, which he had achieved via a carefully crafted internal coalition at ministerial level. Dave was a master of coalitions and of checks and balances. That Referendum idea went hideously wrong but oddly perhaps has united the party on Europe, even the Remainers realising that there is no going back now. But the election and Mrs M’s approach to it has all the signs of re‑dividing the party on far more dangerous and fundamental tectonic plates, those of philosophy. Theresa suddenly looks like a loser; the worst sin in Conservative eyes. After the election results are in, the campaign to become the next party leader will begin; very quickly if there is a hung parliament, more slowly if the majority is solid enough to get Brexit through. And the party is fundamentally still Thatcherite; maybe not sufficiently to choose another Thatcher, though there is a fisherman’s son from Aberdeen who might just fill the role, at least intellectually.
Mrs May is wounded – even if she wins a hundred seats or more she has sustained damage that will not be forgotten. Everybody has suddenly remembered that occupancy of 10, Downing Street is short leasehold, not freehold; the battle for the soul of the Tory party has begun again.
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